[Solved] Show repeated words as error

[pedro]

It bugs me when people write ' the the ' or similar (two adjacent of the same words). I just saw an an article synopsis on the internet with a stutter. I would like to think that they would be using professional-level publishing software. I think OpenOffice should highlight a stutter as an error, but it currently does not. How can I submit a requirement?

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply (robleyd, Moderator).

[RusselB]

Reporting bugs or suggestions
Please note that using the same word twice in the English language is not always incorrect.
Additionally a stutter would be the extra replication of a letter or two in the same word, not a duplication of that word.
My father was an English teacher and I checked this with him before writing my response.

[FJCC]

You can search for repeated words using the Find & Replace tool by entering

Code: Select all

\b([A-Z]+)\s+\1\b

in the Search For box and turning on Regular Expressions under More Options.

[robleyd]

There are a number of grammar check extensions for OpenOffice, at least one of which claims to detect repetitions. You may find more options with a web search.

[pedro]

re: "not a duplication of that word"

I am retired now, but I used to have to work with technical writers. 'Stutter' was the term used by them to describe the repeated word.

I agree that with speech, that the stutter is within a word, but with written words I think it is different. That is, I do not think people have a disorder when writing.

[RoryOF]

LanguageTool extension will often detect a repeated word. But good proofreading should also do so.

[JeJe]

You can use the macro record to record FJCC's search suggestion as a macro and then assign it to a shortcut or toolbar button... making it easy to run whenever you want.

If you want double words being flagged up as part of the program:

You can file an enhancement request for LibreOffice here:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/feedback/

My understanding is there isn't as much development going on in OpenOffice at the moment.

[Lupp]

I would like to think that they would be using professional-level publishing software.

And why shouldn't we expect them to proof-read their publications?

Well, If you look through just a few of my posts in this forum, you will find lots of orthographical errors, syntactical errors, punctuation errors, badly chosen words, non-existing adverbs, adjectives wrongly used as adverbs, and also "stutters". Why didn't I thoroughly proof-read? That's because (1) I'm not a native speaker of English, and thus wouldn't find every error anyway, and (2) I have to use my time primarily trying to make clear what I want to tell.
Then, why didn't I run a spell-checker and a grammar-checker? That's because I don't like them. Yes. I would like to tell you that in German (what's my native language) all the kinds of errors I already mentioned, and hyphenation errors in addition got more frequent since spell-checkers exist. Why? You may guess what I'm thinking.

Let's basically expect people to proof-read their texts or/(and) to get somebody else to do it (in addition).
Let's read over some uncorrected errors with a sympathetic smile.
Let's use software for software tasks. Proof-reading may not be one.

[pedro]

re: "expect people to proof-read their texts or/(and) to get somebody else to do it (in addition)"

fyi. I do not think online forum posts and the like need to be errorless due to their informal nature. Forum posts are not the intended focus of this thread.

Again, before I retired I worked with technical writers... we had formal reviews where:
- the technical writer supposedly reviewed their own work before submitting for formal review
- was reviewed by other writers and they had to provide electronic signatures
- was reviewed by engineer subject matter experts, and they had to provide electronic signatures
- the review comments and approvals were retained for years

Still, repetitive word errors still made it through to publication. That is why I think there should be improvement in the tools.

[RoryOF]

LanguageTool may do the job - try it. English does have valid repeated words, such as "He had had to go to work regularly".

Most people do not proof-read well - I can recollect a situation in one of my first jobs where we printed documents for legal firms; in spite of exhortations to proof-read, the documents were often returned to us signed off as proof read, and later there would be a big row when they discovered errors within the text. So we adopted a strategy - we would put a deliberate major error in the first few lines, perhaps something as major as spelling a personal name incorrectly, or making a gender error, (such as Mr in place of Mrs) and the accuracy of proof reading by the clients increased dramatically! If the erroneous document was returned signed off as valid with the error undetected, we would telephone in great concern and draw the error to the attention of a senior partner who would have the document re-proofed.

[JeJe]

There is also word repetition for emphasis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epizeuxis#Examples

I frequently see news articles with obvious errors. More mistakes are missed proof reading on screen than on page - so I print something out if its important enough.

Edit:

And name duplications

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ated_names

Edit 2:

And ones like

ha ha

[Hagar Delest]

LO (7.2) has the feature and it works fine (it may have been available even earlier):

It seems that there are 2 levels of check: one for words like 'the' (built-in?) and one for standard words (lightproof), the tooltip for correction is slightly different.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the *EDIT button if your issue has been fixed.

[JeJe]

My LibreOffice 7.1 has it too - missed it!

The double word is wavy underlined as part of the grammar checking if selected. If I right click ignore it removes the wavy line but then reinstates it when I do more typing.

[John_Ha]

Most people do not proof-read well

It is virtually impossible to proof read something you have written yourself unless you do something like reading it backwards.

[Lupp]

Senior users of this forum won't be surprised by my dismissal of means basically needing "l10n" if not indisbensable without doubt.

In this case any finding must be considered by a proof-reader anway to regard semantical and additional aspects.
On the level of a "syntax" in the technical sense we can -as so often- use a regular expression to get the occurrences of a supposed "word-stutter" one by one.

You may use

Code: Select all

(\b[:alpha:]+\b)((, | )\1)+

as the search string in F&R with Regular Expression enabled.
LibreOffice and AOO both come with a RegEx engine by ICU supporting all the used constructs.

=== A few hours later ===
Now you find attached an example using a slightly enhanced RegEx.

aoo106267socalledStutters_1.odt

(34.65 KiB) Downloaded 251 times

[pedro]

re: "LO (7.2) has the feature and it works fine"

So the recommendation is to use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice...

I apologize for not being savvy about this. Which one is better supported? Can OpenOffice and LibreOffice coexist?

[JeJe]

Yes you can install them both together. There's more development going on in LO which now has many new features not in OO. I find LO slower though.

[pedro]

I switch to to LibreOffice.

[pedro]

sorry to go off-topic. I found this on libreoffice.org: "LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, a successor to OpenOffice(.org), "

I think the answer to every question here should be "switch to LibreOffice", unless there is reason not to.